


November Dreams

by Frayach



Series: The Exile Series [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Lost Love, M/M, Regret, Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-29
Updated: 2015-11-29
Packaged: 2018-05-04 01:58:09
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5315978
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frayach/pseuds/Frayach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twelve years ago, Draco was stripped of his magic and banished from the U.K. for life.  Since then, he's been trying to make his way in the Muggle world, but memories of Harry still haunt his dreams.</p><p>This is a companion-piece to <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/722815/chapters/1340741">The March Potion</a></p>
            </blockquote>





	November Dreams

**Author's Note:**

> Like _The March Potion_ , this is a bleak little story. Not dark, but bleak. There is also a fleeting reference to breath-play (not H/D) that readers may find disturbing.
> 
> The beautiful artwork is by Naadi.

 

Over the years, he’s slowly surrendered his life to others. Not in a philanthropic way. He’d have to disavow his identity as a Slytherin if he suddenly developed a selfless conscience. True, he occasionally gave to charities and sat on the boards of nonprofits (a particularly ineloquent term used by Muggle Americans that he’d adopted out of resignation). But such activities, no matter how helpful to those they served, were a means to an end. A career advancement or a new boyfriend. Draco was not one to believe that service was an end in and of itself.

No, the surrender of his life was a personal necessity, a capitulation to need.

It started slowly, incrementally. Almost imperceptibly. First there was the personal trainer, who (sadly) refused to read Draco’s subtle hints and expand both the “personal” and the “training” aspect of his employment beyond the weight room and the treadmill. Then there was the cook and the maid because Muggles didn’t have house elves and, besides, what was the point of chopping carrots and braising lamb chops if one cooked for no one but himself? He used to watch his lover’s mouth as he ate, feeling a secret sexual thrill in knowing that his hands had prepared their meal as lovingly as they’d later caress his lover’s body. But that was long ago, and it was far away . . . and, sweet Merlin! When had he taken to singing along with Muggle radio songs? 

Then, in rapid succession, came the personal shopper, the personal assistant and the personal driver for his occasional trips into The City. Alas, all of them were women, so there was no chance that the “personal” in their various titles would result in anything more intimate than it had with his personal trainer. And then, finally, there was the masseuse and the psychiatrist, both of whom were also female, although he had to admit there was nothing even remotely appealing about the prospect of fucking someone who’d seen you contorted into a foetal ball and sucking your thumb in a parody of regression; something that, until then, he’d imagined himself incapable of.

He’d got to the point where he was paying someone to talk to him; paying, even, for someone to touch him – at least in a way that didn’t precede the sticking of body parts into orifices. Once a week, he would strip to the skin in a twilit room, his body malleable from exhaustion and his mind empty of memories, and drown in the feeling of strong and tender hands on his knotted muscles, on the tension in his brow. The music from the pea-pod-thing (which he refused to learn to use despite his one-week-stands’ teasing and eventual disgust) was predictable but soothing nonetheless. Monks’ chaste chants and the mysterious twang of stringed instruments from the Orient. His masseuse would tell him to breathe deeply, to turn over, to relax and always politely ignored his inevitable erection. He wanted to tell her it wasn’t due to the urge to fuck but rather the animal need to be caressed, to be awakened first in the skin and muscles and eventually to the spirit. Only one man had ever made him feel that way, and Draco hadn’t had to pay him with anything but his open mouth against the sleep-sweet skin of his throat as the sun spilled through the curtains and bathed them in a film of sweat. His lover had known how to rub and rock Draco to a deep gut-emptying orgasm with nothing more than his slippery skin, the roll of his muscles in Draco’s arms and between Draco’s legs. No penetration, just the embryonic fluid of comfort and desire. Sweet and paradoxically chaste.

And when it ended, as it inevitably did due to the pull of daily duties, Draco hadn’t had to hand him his credit card as he did with his masseuse. It was only when his ninety minutes came to an end and he emerged, blinking, into the yellow light of the spa’s lobby and opened his wallet that he felt dirty. And bereaved beyond words.

Friday last, his masseuse had told him his back was too knotted for her hands and suggested that he start going to someone else. To his shame he’d wept. In the face of a forty year-old man’s tears, she’d relented, but he hadn’t missed the tiny eye-roll. Later, as he emerged from the showers, his necktie once again circling his throat like a noose, he’d caught her whispering and giggling with one of her colleagues, and in his paranoia and loneliness, he’d been certain they’d been talking about him. That night he’d nearly choked the man he was fucking to death in his own bed. It had started as breath-play, but had crossed into something else entirely. Despite not having come yet, Draco’s cock had been flaccid and limp, and when his thumbs pressed too deep, in imitation of his masseuse’s hands, the other man had lost control of his bowels. To his shame, Draco would have fucked him anyway but for the stench.

This week, his therapist told him that he exhibited a classic case of narcissism – a trait of which she was sick after thirty years of practise. She said he was needy. She said he was self-absorbed. She said she was tired – bone-tired – of his midnight phone calls, his narrow brushes with hospitalization which were always aborted at the last minute when he’d slipped the gurney’s grasp or, once, crawled through a bathroom window, dropping into the wet street fourteen feet below. _You could have killed yourself,_ she said wearily, and Draco got the distinct impression that if he’d succeeded she would not have experienced it as a tragedy.

Later, walking in the empty park, he wept convulsively, leaning his palms against the cold wet bark of a tree and gulping in air. The rain was so fine that it didn’t fall as much as drift. Tattered ghosts of mist through the sparsely planted oaks. Beneath his boots, the leaves were slippery and as red as tongues, and he marvelled at their silence. He, himself, had never managed to master the skill of shutting the fuck up. It was that, perhaps, that had driven his lover from his bed, from his life. His dreams, he told his therapist, were haunted by images of a pale back retreating through an open door, bare and vulnerable, its owner in so great a hurry to leave that he hadn’t bothered with a shirt. In Draco’s dreams, as in reality, he cast a _Petrificus Totalus_ and then, when that didn't work – Harry being capable of throwing off such a common schoolboy hex – a _Cruciatus_. In the end it hadn’t stopped him, but it had left a stain on Draco’s parlour rug when he’d bitten his tongue and choked on the blood. The red of it was lost in the rich hues of the Persian weave, but Draco had left it there all the same. As some kind of perverse reminder, like a postcard received after its sender had died. He’d been on probation at the time, and the use of an Unforgivable curse on the wizarding world’s beloved Boy Who Lived was enough for its revocation. Only Harry’s backroom pleas had secured him exile rather than Azkaban. It had been a close call, though. Draco hadn’t been present, but he’d heard later that Harry had fought as single-mindedly as he always did – for Draco, for his banishment to America.

Draco had never seen him again after that night. His therapist told him that his constant dreams of magic symbolized a sense of entitlement, of grandiosity. Despite knowing the truth, Draco could not argue with her on that point.

The park was not one of the most popular. In the small northern city in which he lived, there was never enough money in the municipal budget to take care of it. Sanitation crews went around once a month to empty the steel barrels that doubled as rubbish bins. By the 30th, they always stunk of dog shit and rotting meat when squirrels fell into their depths and, unable to escape, died there. Draco stood for a long time, wondering helplessly where in the world there was to get to. Arriving at no answer, he returned to his car and finished his cooling coffee. His eyes were nearly swollen shut, and looking in the rear view mirror, he knew that he was no longer beautiful. Although technically, he was in the late summer of his life, it felt more like November in his bones. Another winter. Another year without Harry. His only comfort lay in the fact that, despite revealing the details of his dreams, he’d never once said his name. _Harry_. _Harry, Harry, Harry, Harry._ It was a secret Draco was determined to keep. He’d be damned if he’d pay anyone to hear it roll off his tongue.

He had not yet fallen that far.


End file.
